WEST SACRAMENTO — Junior Caminero snickered loudly from his locker at Sutter Health Park as Rays pitcher Drew Rasmussen laid out the rules of engagement.
If second baseman Brandon Lowe hits a home run, Rasmussen explained, Caminero promises to hit one, too.
That precise situation played out yet again in Wednesday’s 8-2 win over the Athletics, and afterward, all Lowe, Caminero and the Rays could do was laugh.
It took Caminero until his final swing to match Lowe’s tape-measure blast in the second inning, but with two outs in the ninth, the slugging third baseman lifted a high fly ball to deep left, and Lowe just knew.
“As soon as he hit it, I was just like, ‘Of course it’s going to go out,’” Lowe said.
Caminero’s 34th home run of the season — his 11th since the All-Star break, tied for the third most in MLB — put Tampa Bay’s series victory over the A’s on ice.
It also marked the sixth time this season that he and Lowe had homered in the same game, a whopping four of which have come in the past week. On both Friday and Saturday in Seattle, Lowe homered in the first inning, only for Caminero to go deep in the sixth. In Monday’s series opener in Sacramento, the two went back to back for the second time this year.
In all six games in which both players have homered, the order has been the same: Lowe first, then Caminero.
“That’s a game that we have between both of us,” Caminero said through team interpreter Eddie Rodriguez. “If he hits a home run, I hit one, so he needs to tighten up.”
Obviously, if you’re the Rays, it’s not a bad problem to have. Manager Kevin Cash is happy to just stand back and watch.
“Let’s keep it going,” he said. “I hope B-Lowe catches him and Cammy doesn’t slow down. I don’t know how they’ll do that, but that’d be great.”
Considering Caminero is currently on pace for 45 homers after his sixth in his past seven games, Lowe (now at 24) would need to homer at least once every other game to match his teammate.
It’s admittedly a long shot, but the way the duo has been powering the Rays lately, it doesn’t seem out of the realm of possibility.
Hours before his home run in his final at-bat, Caminero helped get things started early for Tampa Bay by lacing a 112.3 mph double into the left-center gap as part of a four-run first inning.
Then it was Lowe’s turn. With one on in the second, after working the count full, the second baseman was all over a 90 mph changeup on the outer half from A’s starter J.T. Ginn, driving it onto the roof of the visitors’ batting cage in left-center field.
“He came pretty far in three times, so I was just like, ‘I know that you’re going to try to go away with something,’” Lowe said. “The sinker and the changeup play pretty similarly, so I got it up in that wind and let the wind take it.”
The 458-foot shot from the lefty Lowe, one foot off his career high (set in 2020), was the longest opposite-field home run tracked by Statcast (since 2015).
Meanwhile, Caminero’s ninth-inning homer — hit 346 feet at a skyscraping 47-degree launch angle — was notable in its own right. It was tied for the second-highest launch angle on a home run this season. Tied with Lowe (on May 21), naturally.
Caminero came through once again on his promise to match Lowe homer for homer — against rather long odds. Not only did the Rays need a ninth-inning baserunner to even bring Caminero to the plate with two outs, but the third baseman slipped out of the box on a fifth-inning groundout and hobbled up the line.
Caminero and Cash both insisted Tampa Bay’s young star is none the worse for wear, with the Rays manager wryly pointing to Caminero’s home run trot as evidence.
“He looked good jogging,” Cash said. “His gait looked fine.”
That sure is a relief for a Rays team seeking to stack consecutive series wins this weekend in San Francisco. On Friday, they’ll start a three-game series at Oracle Park that will conclude a grueling four-city, 12-game, 14-day stretch on the road.
If Lowe, Caminero and the Rays keep hitting like they have lately, they should be in good shape, no matter who homers — or who doesn’t.
“Offensively, we really sparked,” Lowe said. “We really showed what we can do.”
